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Friday, 18 May 2007

Pony performs back flip with double twist

Disaster has struck! Beautiful Maisie, the Exmoor pony, has had an accident!

The poor thing “fell” from one field into another, aided and abetted by a high Pembrokeshire hedgebank. Our native little Welsh ponies know all about banks and not falling off the top of them. Exmoors, it seems, don’t. (Well this one didn’t, but it does now).

She landed on the top of the fence in the field below, complete with barbed wire, breaking the fence post in the process. We found her standing in the middle of the (wrong) field looking very sorry, dangling a leg.

Blood ran cold.

We approached, trying not to panic. Maisie shifted and dangled the other leg. Phew! They can’t both be broken. A quick inspection revealed blood running from numerous scratches, scrapes and puncture wounds. Poor Maisie was definitely in shock and, being a baby, decided she was too sore to move, and therefore wouldn’t.

We added the other two ponies to the field, before they could do any damage to themselves by following her over the fence.

Now Maisie is one very lucky Exmoor pony. Her owner Jo is a vet, as is Jo’s husband Shaun. Jo, who had called over to visit Maisie when the accident happened, used to specialise in treating horses, so she gave Maisie a quick examination, then summoned Shaun and the contents of the horse medicine cupboard at work.

Lucky Maisie got a painkilling injection so she could walk from the field to the yard, then a bucket of food laced with anti-biotic powder and an anti-toxin injection. They had consulted their colleague who is the best horse vet in the area who warned that puncture wounds high up on the leg would cause the most pain. Sure enough, she had a wound on what on a human would be the shin bone. No wonder she looked so sorry for herself! But, all in all, she wasn’t too badly hurt.

She remains on the “wrong” field, under the assumption that it may be easy to fall into, but less easy to fall out of, being lower than the other field and not having any handy banks off which to perform equine gymnastics.

All three ponies are looking smug, because that particular field is regarded as five star accommodation and I have added a fistful of new grey hairs to the existing ones caused by my children.

But we should have known something like this would happen. Maisie has already broken the fence and at her previous field she hauled a huge metal gate off its hinges using her neck.

Jo and Shaun have sensibly no gone on holiday to Cornwall leaving us to nurse the patient and administer a bucket of food with anti-biotics once a day. The patient, meanwhile, has bounced back (literally!)